Color sensing can be used in a variety of applications. For example, color sensing is useful to automatically detect a color of a color changing indicator, a material that changes color following exposure to a specific substance or chemical. Color changing indicators are available to measure different substances, for example, a level of chlorine in a swimming pool or a cleanliness of a surface.
A color changing indicator can also indicate the presence of bodily exudate. But existing solutions for color sensing are insufficient for accurately detecting color in the presence of ambient light. More specifically, ambient light can alter the detected color, causing an erroneous reading. Therefore, while previous solutions may be acceptable for low- or no-light applications such as medical testing, which can be performed in a dark environment such as inside dark equipment, such solutions are inadequate for applications in which ambient light is unavoidable such as testing a color changing indicator in an absorbent article.
Additionally, while other solutions exist for determining a level of bodily exudate in an absorbent article, such solutions are also inadequate. More specifically, solutions that use temperature or humidity sensors alone may provide inaccurate measurements. For example, a humidity sensor may be located too far away from bodily exudate to detect a sudden increase in humidity. Or a temperature sensor may indicate an elevated temperature, but the location of sensing may not be representative of the temperature of the absorbent article overall. Finally, while such solutions are able to detect the presence of bodily exudate, these solutions are unable to detect an amount of bodily exudate present.